Health food store
2873962
208851621
2008-04-28T21:44:01Z
66.67.47.120
{{Unreferenced|date=June 2007}}
[[Image:pepperseggplants.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Organic vegetables at a farmers' market in Argentina.]]
A '''health food store''' is a type of [[grocery store]] that primarily sells [[health food]], [[organic food]]s, local produce, and often [[nutritional supplement]]s. Health food stores often offer foods for people with special dietary needs, such as people with [[allergy|allergies]] and [[diabetes mellitus|diabetics]], and also for [[vegan|vegans]], [[vegetarianism|vegetarians]], and people living entirely on [[raw foodism|raw food]].
==Health food==
The term ''health food'' has been used since the 1920s to refer to specific foods claimed to be especially beneficial to [[health]], although the term has no official definition. Some terms that are associated with health food are [[Macrobiotic diet|macrobiotics]], [[Natural Foods Diet|natural foods]], [[organic food]]s and [[whole foods]]. Macrobiotics is a [[Diet (nutrition)|diet]] focusing primarily on [[whole grain|whole cereals]]. Whole cereals, along with other ''whole foods'', are foods that are minimally processed. Whole cereals have their fiber, germ and hull intact and are considered more nutritious. Natural foods are simply foods that contain no artificial ingredients. Organic foods are foods that are grown without the use of conventional and artificial pesticides and must meet certain [[Organic certification|organic standards]].
==History of health food stores==
Many foods which are now commonplace in groceries first entered the market in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Efforts by early health pioneers such as [[Sylvester Graham]], [[Horace Greeley]], [[John Harvey Kellogg]], [[George Ohsawa]], [[Ellen White]] and others spurred an interest in health food. As early as the 1920s and 1930s health food stores started opening in the United States selling products such as [[molasses|blackstrap molasses]] and [[brewer's yeast]]. Health food stores became much more common in the 1960s in connection to the newly emerging [[ecology movement]] and [[counterculture]].
Many health food stores are [[worker cooperative|worker owned cooperatives]] and [[consumers' cooperative]]s due in part to their growth of popularity during the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the ability of cooperative buying power to bring lower costs to the consumer.
Over the last decade, health food, and especially organic food, has entered the mainstream. Companies such as [[Whole Foods Market]], a large multinational corporation, have profited greatly and grown substantially during this expansion.
==Whole food stores==
Some stores that would usually be thought of as 'Health food stores' prefer the term "Whole food stores' to acknowledge that they sell whole or organic foods, but not the large range of artificial nutritional supplements common in other health food stores.
[[Category:Food retailing]]
[[Category:Organic food]]
[[Category:Supermarkets]]
[[de:Bioladen]]